Nokia MeeGo Slider Phone Lives On as Developer Edition

While Nokia had announced its first MeeGo smartphone in the form of the slate-styled Nokia N9, developers will be able to get another version of the MeeGo phone with a slide-out keyboard and some modified specs. Dubbed the Nokia N950, the developer edition with its sliding keyboard should resemble early leaks for Nokia’s MeeGo phones and the overall styling would be similar in some respects to the current Symbian^3-powered Nokia E7.

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The Nokia N950 will be similar internally to the Nokia N9, which features an ARM-powered 1 GHz CPU, PowerVR SGX530 graphics, as well as 1 GB of RAM. The device will feature 1 4-inch FWVGA LCD display rather than the 3.9-inch Clear Black Display based on AMOLED screen technologies on the Nokia N9.

Also, the Nokia N950 will be made of aluminum metal, rather than the polycarbonate plastic of the Nokia N9. Though the Nokia N9 will feature a more sensitive compass and NFC support, the latter feature will be lacking on the N950 developer phone, the Nokia N950 is said to support an 8-megapixel camera though some reports suggest that the camera module may be a 12-megapixel camera. If true, a 12-megapixel camera will be similar to the photo-flagship Nokia N8 today.

Nokia does warn developers that the software running on the Nokia N950 is in beta and that OTA updates may not be available until the next version of the software. There are a number of ‘known issues’ associated with this developer preview phone, but for those who can’t wait for the N9 to ship later this year, these may be acceptable issues:

General:

* The Nokia N950 phone software is in beta stage and does not represent

the final quality or feature set which will be available when Nokia N9

is commercially available.

* If the device becomes unresponsive you can to perform a hardware reset.

Press the power key on top of the device and keep it pressed down for

8 or more seconds

* Certain types of use may drain the battery faster than normal.

* Across the UI there are still logical ID’s shown in some languages,

icons may not be finalized and animations with opening windows are

missing.

* Over-the-Air updates may not be available for the next software version.